I am doing a final project for my master’s degree of TESOL right know. In the project, I need English teachers’ perspectives and opinions about grammar teaching. I really need your guys’ help.

On my opinion, grammar is important but it is hard to keep grammar teaching interesting. My own experience of learning English was not very fun. I remember my English teachers usually explained the grammar rules for us, and then had us do the grammar exercises. Therefore, in my project, I am eager to explore efficient and interesting ways of teaching grammar. In addition, I will be an English teacher soon after I graduate this year. I hope I could provide my students with interesting experiences of learning English. I really need your opinion and suggestion.

Also, in my project, I have tried out the inductive approach. This was actually new to me. I gave students many examples of the target grammar feature of conditional, and guided them to find out the grammar rules without explicit explanation for them. Students’ feeling for this approach was mixed. While some of them felt it was interesting, some of them preferred more explicit explanation of grammar rules. Could you also give me some advice about this approach?

I really appreciate it if you could give me your opinion about grammar teaching, and share with me some techniques and activities.

Well, that's really a topic that needs a second thoughtIn my humble opinion I'd like to say that anytime you get involved in teaching any subject and in this case English you must never focus your lessons mostly on grammar, and exercises realization, why where is the communicative approach of your lesson? Remember that there've always been misconceptions at the time of conducting an English lesson, misconceptions which not every teacher has, that have mislead the very own process a good example of this it's the ways many teachers of English teach by having their students become familiar with communicative functions, grammar and exercises. And it's not about that It's about making them speak, which is the most important. Remember that the four basic skills to be developed in your students are speaking, listening, reading and writing, and the most important which doesnot exclude the others is speaking. Have you ever noticed the lack of knowledge somehow natives have on grammar?, they don't know most of the time why they use a lot of words such as prepositions, and the like, they just use them, 'cause they learned to speak not to how to use the grammar related.

You are absolutely right, Anthony, and I am glad there are teachers that agree with my point of view in this aspect.

The communicative approach is the main goal in the learning of any language. Unfortunately, most schools demand their teachers to emphasize accuracy, giving less importance to fluency. I hope some day when people get together to the conclusion that English is becoming a global language, this kind of approach will fade out.

cwcaro wrote:Also, in my project, I have tried out the inductive approach. This was actually new to me. I gave students many examples of the target grammar feature of conditional, and guided them to find out the grammar rules without explicit explanation for them. Students’ feeling for this approach was mixed. While some of them felt it was interesting, some of them preferred more explicit explanation of grammar rules. Could you also give me some advice about this approach?

Practice, that is what our students need when we, ESL instructors, are talking about how to develop their fluency in English.

I agree that the inductive approach you used helped you students to gain practical knowledge of grammar directly from their own experience. Such approach must have also helped them to understand in which real-life situations they might apply this kind of knowledge. That is for sure one of the advantages of this approach.

On the other hand, you mentioned that some of your students needed more explicit explanation of grammar rules. Why do not give them additional home grammar exercises with the appropriate grammatical theory included and then discussed it online.

Teaching my students English Grammar, I often use the following schema:In Class1 – Oral practice of a number of grammar constructions. Rules are not explained. Situations, in which these grammar constructions are used, on the contrary, are well-explained and described. 2 – Small group performance of a short sketch that contains the same grammar.3 - Discussion about the nature of grammar constructions just used. At home4 – Grammatical theory to be read and appropriate grammar exercises to be done.5 – Online discussion if needed in order to gain more understanding.

Here is an example of a short sketch that was performed by my ESL students in order to train such grammar issues as Simple Past, Habits and Present Tenses, Would You Like, Be Going TO, and Can:[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_risiw1cx1A[/url]